Archive for August, 2007
The Ingenio inside i-muse
While usability tests of the videoguide at the Educational Silk Museum of Como are going on and continue to give us great results, the value of our entrepreneurial project granted us the admission to the Bando Ingenio, now managed by Regione Lombardia.
It’s a pretty articulate announcement of competition which includes a series of facilities: vouchers to spend for base and advanced courses about different matters, consultancies by tutors and experts qualified to support the beneficiaries of the competition, and also the expenses refund for educational mobility, that is to say for the participation to seminaries and education courses useful to complete the entrepreneurial project.
This last kind of facilitation is very important to us since it will allow us participating to the ICHIM 07 international conference which will take place in Toronto at the end of october, during which we’ll have the chance to present i-muse.
In my opinion there’s no better way to professionally grow up than being able to confront with experienced people and these high profile conferences are the right place to do that. 🙂
Vespatour 2006 Part 12: Arezzo
I was in Cortona in the evening of august 16, the eighth stop of the Vespatour, when a guy I met at the hostel recommended me to go to Arezzo, a town I didn’t plan to visit.
When he told me they filmed my favorite movie there, Life is beautiful by Benigni, and that there were panels marking the places where the scenes were filmed, I had no more hesitations and I spent the following day in that magic town.
The first picture shows Piazza Grande. May be someone will recognize the window of the hilarious scene “Maria, throw down the keys!”. 🙂
The second one is where Guido (Benigni) hit Dora (Braschi) while he was going by bicycle and then he greeted her saying “Buongiorno Principessa!“, while the third one is the park near the Cathedral where I rested a few minutes to write a postcard, the second one I sent during the journey, beginning with those words since it was for a girl. 😉
All the 70 pictures of the day I spent in Arezzo are in the twelfth gallery of the journey.
PS: On that postcard I marked the wrong window in Piazza Grande. I noticed that when I was back home and watched Benigni’s movie again…
i-muse Usability Tests on Tafter
It’s a satisfaction watching the result of our work in the hands of people while they visit the Educational Silk museum of Como with i-muse, seeing them at ease and at the end satisfied while they recall the things which impressed them the most! 🙂
Most of them actually didn’t expect such a high quality of the guide in all its components: workings, graphics and contents.
Usability tests are going on, they’re allowing us to refine the software and recently I had the chance to explain how they are performed in an article published on the italian online magazine Tafter.
Usability is common sense, as Donald A. Norman says, and from the tests we made so far it seems result we wished to obtain is getting near: when people, at the end of their visit, comment only the contents it means the rest is ok, the i-muse formula works! 😉
Vespatour 2006 Part 11: from Siena to Cortona
In the late afternoon of august 3 of the last year, I began the Vespatour, a journey that gave me a lot of surprises I’m now describing here on the blog, a bit at a time.
With this post I’m about at the half. 😉
The Siena’s Palio always fascinated me: a competition so ancient and beloved by the people living there I thought it had something special I couldn’t grasp by solely watching it on TV.
So last year I coordinated the stops of the journey to be able to attend it.
In the afternoon of august 16, after visiting San Galgano’s Abbey, I arrived in Siena just before the start.
The atmosphere was incredible: the Contradaioli (citizens living in specific areas of the town) thrilled for their jockey and his horse, while tourists assisted to the big show.
The Contrada della Selva won the race, the one where I parked the Vespa, so I immediately left Siena heading towards Cortona just as the celebrations began.
Here are the 30 photos of the eleventh gallery of the journey. 🙂